Dean's Eye View
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Dean is slowly going crazy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch. Missing and alternate scenes for 4.06, from Dean's POV, mostly. Spoilers for that episode, implied spoilers for 4.10


**Warnings:** **SPOILERS FOR 4.06 and, sort of, 4.10.** Do not read this if you have not seen 4.06, it will make even less sense. Stream-of-conciousnessy. Contains profanity. Dean started swearing and would not stop. Starts out funny-ish, then goes... not funny.

**Disclaimer:** Kripke's spinnin' the A side, I'm just trying to take a peek at side B.

**Summary:** Dean is slowly going crazy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, switch.

**A/N:** My attempt at Dean's perspective of several (not all) scenes in 4.06, including some scenes not in the episode. Yeah, after hinting for it back in the fall, I wrote it. The bunny wouldn't 'shoo'. This is kind of different than what I usually write, stream-of-conciousnessy and experimental, meaning weird tense shifts and run-on sentences like whoa. It might make assertions that not all fans will agree with, and makes a few I'm not sure _I_ agree with. Also mangles episode events lightly. And I didn't intend to do the entire episode, just a couple missing scenes, but... uh. *sigh* Was hoping to get this beta'd for coherence and cohesion, but in the end I just wanted to post it before I chickened out, so it could be rough. This is the other of the two things which have been blocking me (the other being "Unstuck" which this one calls on, sort of). Hopefully things will start to move now that this is posted too. :-P

-.-  
**Dean's Eye View**  
by CaffieneKitty  
-.-

Dean restrained a grimace at the moist, squashy organ the coroner plopped into his hands. He'd seen and held worse, way worse, and there was no way he was gonna act squeamish in front of Sam, who was already chuckling quietly.

The guy's heart was big, and heavy. Heh. He was heavy-hearted. Dean rummaged around in his mind for a joke of some kind to gross out Sam later, but then Sam got sprayed in the face with innard-goo, and since Sam seemed to be generally okay, that was totally worth a smirk. _Also totally not sanitary, but any bugs this guy had probably died days ago, right? Nothing to worry about. This coroner guy would be freaking out right now if there was something to worry about._

He would. Wouldn't he? Yeah, he would.

In Dean's hands, the heart oozed.

-.-

"Something scared 'em to death?"

"Alright, so what can do that?" Dean noticed the cluster of kids hanging around by the Impala. _When did kids get to be so young?_

"Ghosts, vampires, chupacabras. Could be a hundred things."

Three or four kids. Bunch of little punks. Like a gang, hanging around, waiting to start some crap. Dean was that age once. He knew what that was about. _Better not be screwing with my car or flattening my tires, I'll give 'em more than Hell..._

"Yeah," said Sam. "So, we make a list and start crossing things off."

_What's that thing they do now? There was something on TV._ Grainy traffic camera images; a frenzy of kicking, punching, tearing kids. _Swarming. Yeah._

"Alright. Who was the last person to see Frank O'Brien alive?" Dean asked, keeping an eye on the kids by the car.

_They hang out, waiting for their turn to punish someone. Just a few of them, you think you can take 'em if they try anything, and then hundreds of them, waiting for the okay, pour out of alleys and buildings and pound the crap out of you. They kill people that way, tourists in Guatemala. Nothing left but a smear on the pavement. Crazy._

"Uh, his neighbor, Mark Hutchings."

One of the kids looked in their general direction.

Dean grabbed Sam's elbow. "Hang on, hang on..."

"What?"

"I don't like the looks of those teenagers down there."

Another one came over to join the rest, bumping fists.

_Oh yeah. I'm on to you ya little-_

"Let's walk this way." Dean strode across the street. Can't be too careful. Been up against damn near every monster there is, been to Hell and back, not gonna get beat up by a swarm of teenagers. No way.

-.-

It wasn't so much that the guy was sitting there with a ten-foot snake wrapped around him like a scarf; it was obviously safe or he wouldn't be handling it right? It's just that behind and beside and all around Dean could hear things bubbling and chirping and hissing and _moving_. It was all setting off Dean's 'something's sneaking up behind us' alarms that had been getting trained since he was a freaking kid. Things waiting to attack from all sides, rip and tear. Too many directions to check. He and Sam were surrounded and trapped by slithery half-seen motion, and it was _so not cool_.

Something splashed and Dean cranked his head around to see some kind of baby alligator leering behind him.

_But that's stupid. It's stupid, right, because everything's in cages and tanks and stuff, and how in hell does this guy sleep with all this stuff moving around in the dark anyway?_

Dean glanced around the room while he and Sam asked the guy questions about his dead neighbor, what he was afraid of. _Yeah, no slithering things in the dark, no way, get enough of that crap working the job, I don't need it where I sleep. Even if it's all caged up. And it is. All caged up. Alligator's in a cage, that frigging... what the hell is that? Hissing mini-Godzilla thing is caged... The giant spider's in a cage. Everything's in a tank or a cage. Except the snake on the guy's shoulders that he's patting like it's a puppy or something, that's not in a cage at all. _

Dean kept an eye on the snake while the guy talked about his dead neighbor's past and wife.

Was it a poisonous snake or one of those ones that crushes you to death? Or the kind that swallows its prey whole and digests its victims for days? Maybe they all did that. How fast do snakes move? Can snakes jump?

_Naw, don't be stupid. Snakes can't jump. Although if this guy's a whackjob, he could throw that snake at us right now. Hey, he was the dead guy's neighbor, maybe he used his _snakes _to scare the guy to death. He could throw that damn thing at us and it'd bite and that'd be that. Swallow us whole like on Animal Planet, be all lumpy for a week or two and then nothing. Snake shit._

Noticing Dean's focus, the guy chuckled. "Don't be scared of Donny! He's a sweetheart!"

Dean held his face as expressionlessly as he could manage. _Yeah, and the next door neighbor was always so quiet and no one ever suspected a thing._

The guy grinned like he was about to grow fangs himself. "It's Marie you gotta look out for. She smells fear."

Dean saw Sam do a double-take out of the corner of his eye and felt the dry brush of scales along the back of the sofa. He glanced over and- _Holy _fuck! _Snake as big around as my goddamn leg!_ Dean froze. _The guy's a whackjob, he did his neighbor in and now this fucking huge snake is gonna eat us both and why the _fuck _is Sam snickering! Does he not see the size of this snake?_

Dean tried not to aggravate the reptile sliding over his leg in any way at all, and hummed "Some Kind of Monster." Very, very quietly.

-.-

_Does everyone in this town have their brights on?_

"How was Frank's pad?"

"Clean. Searched it top to bottom; no EMF, no hex bags, no sulfur."

_I can hardly see the road. Is that guy crossing the centerline? If I have to swerve to avoid him I'm gonna hit the moron who parked halfway out into the street. I should slow down._

"So probably no ghosts, no witches, no demons. Three down and ninety seven to go."

_That guy _is _across the center line! Crap! No, wait, he's in the two-way left. I wish they'd knock it off with the high-beams! _And _this guy behind me's just about crawling up my ass. Maybe I'll slow down a little more. These people are insane._

"Dude. You're going twenty."

"And?"

"That's the speed limit."

"What, safety's a crime now?"

Sam raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

_Is there someone in my blind spot? There is no way I'm going faster. This town is full of psychos with driver's licenses. These nutjobs with their brights on, all tearing down the street like it's Daytona and I'm damn sure there's someone in my blind spot. I think. I can't tell. Screw it. Too much traffic. No way am I turning left._

"Dude, where are you going? That was our hotel!"

"Sam, I'm not gonna make a left-hand turn into oncoming traffic, I'm not suicidal!"

_Whoa. Wait. What?_

"Did I just say that? That's kinda weird."

_What the hell is wrong with me? I've been behind the wheel since I could reach the pedals- Holy crap that guy just ran a yellow light! Eyes on the road, eyes on the road! It'd be easier to concentrate without that squealing. Squealing. What's squealing?_

Dean watched the lights lighting up on the EMF as Sam pointed it towards him and felt his chest tighten.

_I'm giving off EMF I can't be giving off EMF I'm not- it's not. There's something wrong. There's really something really wrong! EMF means ghosts, and I'd've noticed before now if the whole Hell and back thing made me set off EMF and- Oh crap._

"Am I haunted? _Am I haunted!_"

-.-

Dean looked up and up and up at the front of the Bluebird Hotel. _Damn that's high. Sam used to sleepwalk. When he was six or seven, yeah, and only for a couple weeks, but he might start again, stress and all, it happens. He could walk right off the balcony in his sleep..._ Dean could clearly picture Sam's long frame, tipping over the flimsy railing and pin-wheeling down, down to face-plant on the street. Splat. Sammy everywhere. _No. Nonono. No top floor. Screw that._

Dean got back into the Impala, checked that the car was in 'Park' and the parking brake was engaged and tried not to think about all the things that could make a parking break pop off and the car shift into gear and go rolling into traffic, even side street traffic because there was no way he was parking on the main street with that bunch of yahoos roaring past 24/7 and all it'd take is one delivery truck roaring up the side street as the car rolled back, and it'd get mashed and punted into the main street traffic to get bashed around by those maniacs, passed back and forth like a soccer ball-

_Stop, idiot. That's stupid. Holy crap, my arm is itchy._ He realized then that the whole while he'd been contemplating the potential traffic mayhem of the parking brake failing on the Impala, he'd been scratching at his arm. _What the hell?_ Dean peeled back his sleeve and looked at his forearm to see three red scratches, like claw-marks.

Of course he didn't _actually_ shriek. Naw. Mainly because he slapped his other hand over his mouth. More like a high-pitched grunt. "Oh fuck. Oh fuck," he whispered through his fingers, wide-eyed, hyperventilating, staring at the scratches.

_It's scratching me. Some invisible ghostly fucker is scratching me! Or making me scratch myself. What if it's making me scratch myself? What if it makes me do something else, what if it makes me hurt someone, what if it makes me hurt Sam! Get a _grip _Winchester. Just stop scratching. You're in control. Calm. Down._

Dean jammed his hands between his knees and started humming. Stopped quickly, realizing he'd been humming "Master of Puppets" and he so did not want to think of being used like a puppet by some frigging ghost, or demon, or fuck only knew what.

_Calm down, calm down, where's Sam? He went for food. Making some calls. Maybe he's left again, maybe he's gone back to Ruby because I'm so fucked up, maybe he's dead, I- Fuck, Dean, get a fucking _grip.

Music. Need music. Must have music.

Dean checked the car was still in park and the parking brake was still engaged, then flicked the ignition key over to the ACC position and stuffed a tape into the deck. Highway to Hell started up, and immediately brought up thoughts of actually going to Hell, the dreams and things he tried to forget he remembered, mind skittering away, pushing away but never escaping, and then thoughts of Sam going back to Ruby and using the psychic demon-blood powered crap and Dean not being able to stop him and Castiel and his band of feathered friends coming along to, to fucking _smite_ Sammy or something and, yeah, no, that tape wasn't going to help today.

Dean punched it out of the deck and left the radio on for a bit too long. There was some bouncy pop music crap on, and it drilled straight into his brain with an earworm so bad maybe he'd get stuck humming the damn thing forever and never ever be able to get it out of his head, and- _Calm down you moron, it's just a stupid song!_ Dean leaned over to get the box of tapes out from under Sam's seat, trying desperately not to hum or god forbid sing the damn thing, but... "Womanizer, woman, womanizer, you're a womanizer ohhh." _Quick, tape, need tape! Need tape now, please, god!_

He swapped the AC/DC tape protruding from the deck for the first tape he grabbed out of the box. _Dunununununununununu bah! Bah bah bah! Bah bah bah! Bah bah baaaaaah!_ Okay. Eye of the Tiger. Okay. That'd do.

Dean rolled onto his back, laying across the front seat and cranked the volume, letting the music drown out his thoughts and his pulse, letting it fill his head, focussing on breathing and the beat. Nothing more.

Better. Not solving any problems, not taking away the stupid irrational fears, not making the memories go away, but drowning them out for a while. Just like it always had before.

He rewound the tape twice before Sam showed up and scared the crap out of him.

-.-

_Why do we have to _open _things?_

Dean held the flashlight like he used to do for Dad, trained on the locker full of scrabbling and scritching.

_It's probably just a rat._ He hated rats. They caused the frigging plague in the middle ages or whenever it was and killed millions of people. And they had, just, those beady little eyes, like demon eyes, all black and shiny and _plotting_. He didn't even want to think about the tails, but there was the thought, the tails, like scaly wanna-be tentacles.

He shook his head at Sam's glance. He couldn't handle a rat right now, couldn't even think about a rat right now and one rat (please oh please just one and not a locker stuffed full of rats waiting to burst out in a wave of beady evil eyesandteethandtails and oh god) was probably the most harmless thing that could be in there. Not that they were harmless with that Black Death, 'killed millions of people' thing but they weren't _ghosts._

"One," Sam whispered.

_Do rats have ghosts?_ Naw, that was stupid. But what if it was the ghost of a rat. What could the ghost of a rat do to you? How many rats had probably died in this mill over the years? Probably hundreds. Maybe all the rat ghosts frigging combined into one giant ghost rat or something, like Voltron. Maybe that's how ghost sickness spread; ghost rats. Like the Plague. Ghost sickness, the Plague... Oh God. He was totally being haunted by the ghost of a giant rat.

"Two."

_Why do we _have _to open doors. Can't we just leave this one closed and back away from it slowly? No! No, not back away. That's when it'll get you._

"Three." Sam swung the door open and instead of something scurrying out down around their feet there's a quick flash of two _glowing yellow eyes_ up around the six foot mark as something yowled and launched out of the locker, something that may or may not have been the reborn Yellow-Eyed Demon somehow inhabiting the form of a six-foot tall giant spectral rat and that was just fucking _it._

Dean screamed.

-.-

He thought he was coping okay, but then he'd turned and the ghost was there and Sam said "Hey!" and Dean was running and out the door before he realized Sam wasn't behind him. How could Sam not be right behind him? That was a frigging _ghost_ and it was _coming right at them_ or was going to be coming right at them because Sam said "Hey" to it, of course they should run only Sam's not right behind him and oh god he's left Sam to fight the ghost by himself and _Sammy would die._

Dean skidded to a stop beside the trunk of the Impala, trembling too hard to open it, _keys, can't find the fucking keys,_ fingers clawing uselessly at the trunk lid. All he could see in his mind was Sam on the floor of the mill, dead, and - Dean's knees buckled as his heart raced - Sam hanging from a rafter, dead, Sam torn to shreds by the mill machinery, dead, and - _it's not real, it's not _real - Sam, his neck snapped around backwards, dead, and - _fight it you goddamn loser_ - Sam with a knife in his back, in the mud, dead - _no, no_ - and Sam alive, but with his eyes burning yellow, stretching out a hand and sending the ghost to Hell with his mind, laughing and - _nonono, _Sam!

Dean huddled low to the ground, leaning on the Impala's bumper, face buried in his arms, trying to breathe. He could feel his heart in his chest twitching with each pulse like it was trying to escape. _God, god. This is stupid! Deal with it! Come on you fuck-up, get it together!_

He unbent, tried to ignore the images - SamdeadSamdeadSamdead - and crouched behind the trunk, panting, head in his hands.

_Sam's fine. He can take care of himself better without having to worry about you being a freak. He did fine on his own for four months. He doesn't need you anymore._

A spike of pain snapped through his chest like electricity, like invisible knives in an abandoned cabin.

The liquor bottle was in his hand again before he could think.

-.-

Dean blinked as Sam towed him out of the cop shop and stuffed him in the passenger seat of the Impala.

"You mad at me Sammy?" he mumbled as Sam shut the passenger door.

Sam looked mad. His jaw was clenched and everything.

"Got a perfeck right to be mad." Dean muttered as Sam rounded the car. "I'm drunk. We're onna case. S'not perfeshnl."

Sam got in and slammed the driver's side door.

"Yer pissed off. I c'n tell. I deserve it. 'M useless, an' s'not fair to get wasted an' leave you coverin' for my sorry ass."

"Dean-"

"Yer right, Sam. I am a _dick."_

Sam shouted "I'm not-!" but stopped himself and glanced around the police station parking lot, lowering his voice. "I'm not pissed off at you, Dean! I'm pissed off at this ghost or ghost sickness, whatever, for messing with your head!"

Dean hunched down into the passenger seat. "'F you say so."

"You're gonna die if we can't figure this out, Dean. And I'm not gonna let that happen."

Dean frowned and hiccuped.

Sam huffed and started the car. "We'll get you sobered up, and then we'll go see what we can find out about this Garland guy. All right?"

-.-

Dean started to wonder if he'd done the right thing as he walked alone down the dark streets.

Once he'd sobered up enough not to make an ass of himself and screw up the case, Sam had dragged him out on the case again. The rest of the day had been a blur of panic to panic to panic.

A dog barked in someone's yard and Dean jumped. _Just a dog. Not a Hell Hound. Don't be an idiot._ But he crossed the street anyway.

At the nursing home, Dean was bowled over by the realization of just how often they risked getting arrested based on his crappy Kinko's photoshopping. There were tiny bubbles in the lamination, and a sliver of skew in the way the photo was cropped on the FBI ID's. Real FBI ID was nowhere near that sloppy. How were people ever fooled by that crap? And seriously, Tyler and Perry? Even the guy who lived in the house of reptiles knew Aerosmith. Sam had to know this wasn't gonna work. But Sam went ahead with it, like always, and it had worked.

_Not without me nearly screwing it up again,_ thought Dean, glancing around the streets, hearing noises in the distance.

He couldn't keep his mouth shut while Garland's brother examined the badges. One look from the guy and Dean was babbling like an idiot. He'd struggled to keep under control during the endless interview, while half a hundred things the guy said sent his heart racing again and made him want to crawl under the table or run out of the building. He kept it together, but barely.

More barking, further off. Dean gritted his teeth and ignored his heart racing. _Ordinary dog, dumbass. Chill._

He was dangerous like this, he knew it. He could have gotten them both busted for the fake ID's and they'd really be screwed, trapped in a jail cell as his clock ran down on. Or, really, Sam would be screwed, and Dean'd be dead. Dead and back in Hell, because angel or no angel, there was no way he could go anywhere else. Not after the things he'd done. His mind skated away from the memories, but he knew.

Dean jumped half out into the street as a dog went batshit in the yard of the house he was walking beside. _Come on. Get it together._ A Hell Hound wasn't even a dog. Not an actual one. Though in a way a Hell Hound was kind of the essence of all dogs, only evil. Did that work in reverse? Were all dogs a little bit Hell Hound? A tiny core of evil, festering, waiting for an excuse to bust out and shred- _Shut up, Dean._

When they'd gotten out of the old folks' home and Sam laid out just how screwed he was, how the usual salt-and-burn wasn't a possibility, Dean had started to panic again.

What if Sam tried something stupid? Remembering some of the insane crap Sam had tried the last time Dean's clock was running down... And then Sam had said, "We'll have to try something else."

Dean had snapped. Unloaded like an AK-47 with a jammed trigger, tossed the keys at Sam and walked away.

_It's probably better that I just went off alone._ Dean undid the top button on his collar. _Try and get through this on my own. No last minute self-sacrifices from Sam, no fucking way._ Dean knew what Hell was like, what it did to people, and there was no way Sam would ever go there. No way. Not Sam. No Hell Hounds were gonna come after Sam. Not ever.

Nails ticked on the cement behind Dean and a low growling emanated from down around his ankles.

_Oh god._

-.-

After Sam left the hotel, it got worse. Cooped up in the room, no way to help Sam or himself, every noise turning into the bark of a wild dog, or the cocking of an unseen gun, or the whispering of ghosts.

TV was fine, until it wasn't. Who the hell road hauls Pokey? That was just wrong. Dean turned off the TV.

With the TV off, all the noises got worse, nothing to drown them out, no distractions. He tried, he really tried to keep telling himself that it was people talking in another room, someone walking past in the hallway, a creaky door, but everything, everything was _not right_ in a huge way.

He didn't dare touch the guns, even to move them further away from the room's radiator, so the shells wouldn't explode from the heat. He turned the thermostat down and then the room got cold, fast, too fast, like the ghost was in the room with him, but he knew Sam had set the salt lines before he left... maybe he set them himself, Sam had left fast but- oh god he hadn't set them, had he? The room wasn't secure and the ghost was in the room. This wasn't just the heat being off, there was movement and he could feel the ghost, watching him, _moving_, the patches of cold spreading. It was getting stronger, the ghost was getting stronger and he couldn't fight it, couldn't pick up a gun because he'd end up shooting himself for sure, either by accident or just to _shut everything up_. Couldn't even pick a gun with salt loads because he couldn't remember which ones had which now, stupid, stupid, stupid, and getting shot with salt hurt like a bastard which he should know, thank you Sam.

No, not Sam, Ellicot, a ghost that made Sam realize how much he hated Dean and made him pull the trigger, over and over. A ghost Dean had sent to Hell.

Dean hit the floor knees first and fell back against the wall. _Deep breaths, come on. Suck it up, Winchester. It's not real, there's no ghost here, it's just a draft. We salted the room when we got in. Sam put down more this morning. It's okay. It's safe. No ghosts here. Calm down, dumbass._ Back braced against the wall, Dean rested his head on his arms, waiting for his breathing to slow. Trying to ignore the voices and noises in the hallway.

"Dean."

Dean jumped at the voice inside the room and opened his eyes. Castiel leaned against the door frame.

"D-" Dean swallowed and smiled nervously. "Don't do that. Please. I, uh. Little jumpy."

Castiel stared evenly at Dean, watching him get up from the floor. "I don't take orders from you, Dean."

"I- I know. I know. You made that real clear after the Witness thing." Dean took a deep breath. "So. What's up?"

"Nothing." Castiel kept staring into Dean's eyes. Dean told himself it wasn't a threatening stare, it was just... Castiel. Staring. Feeling threatened by it was a side effect of the whole 'scared of everything' bullshit.

"Nothing? Just stopping by to say hi?" Dean tried for a smile again.

The angel tilted his borrowed head slightly, like he was examining a moth that had come out of a cocoon he'd been expecting to contain a butterfly. _Does Heaven have butterflies? Right. Heaven is probably wall-to-wall frigging butterflies._ "Nothing's up, Dean. Least of all you."

"Wha-what?"

"I raised you up, but we were wrong. You were a mistake. You're useless."

Dean gaped. "Hey, hey I-"

"No, Dean." Castiel's face was bland, blank. "You were a mistake. You're going back down."

"Give me a chance!"

"Every chance you've had, you've wasted." Castiel's mouth twisted in sour irritation.

"No, please! Sam, he needs me."

"Sam's our concern now. We'll deal with him."

"But I can save him! I can turn him around! He's already stopped hanging around with Ruby."

"Has he." Castiel said flatly. "What evidence do you have? For that matter, why have you not exorcised Ruby yourself and sent her back to the flames? It's too late for Sam. He's our problem now."

"But you can't, he-!"

"You sold your soul. You turned away from the Light. And we both know how you were spending your time while you were down there." The side of Castiel's nose twitched, as close as the angel got to a disgusted sneer. "How far you went while you where down there."

Nausea flooded through Dean along with the memories. "I didn't want- I-"

"You more than deserve Hell, Dean. You asked for it. You begged a Crossroads Demon for it."

Dean's chest tightened, he couldn't breathe. "Please. You have to-"

"There is nothing you want that I 'have to' do." Castiel snapped. "You're out of this War. You're dishonorably discharged, Dean. You're going back to where you belong." Dark shadows began creeping out from behind Castiel, slowly darkening the room.

"No," Dean rasped over the roaring noise that filled the room.

"It'll be literal Holy War now," said Castiel voice clear and strong over the roar, "the most absolute form. Us versus Them, and humanity the battlefield. All because you couldn't do the simple job of keeping your brother from becoming what Azazel intended him to be. All because you couldn't keep your brother innocent and safe."

Dean could barely hear over the roaring. The roaring that matched his pulse. His pulse. "I'm- this isn't real."

Castiel reached for Dean sadly, wings coming forward to encircle him.

Dean backed away, into the wall, "It's not real." Slid down, curled up, arms over his head. "It's not real, you're not _real!_"

For a second more all he heard was the rush of wings, closing on him. Then there was silence.

Dean gasped and woke up. The back of his head hit the wall when he jerked his face out of his folded arms, wrapped around his knees. Pain was shooting down his left arm and his chest was so tight it felt like hot iron bands were crushing his ribcage.

"Dream. Idiot." Dean sat and panted, rubbing his arm, looking around the cold room, trying to calm down. No way to tell if Castiel had been there or if it had all been a hallucination.

He really hoped it had been a hallucination.

Something rattled past in the hallway and Dean stumbled as fast as he could to turn the TV on again. Anything for a distraction.

His phone rang two minutes later.

-.-

_Okay, okay, okay,_ thought Dean, glancing around at the noises in the hall and the barking. _Dead cop on the floor. No demon smoke. Not possessed. Not a hallucination. Fuck. People had to have heard that._

Dean looked around, trying to ignore the barking, - _that's a hallucination, it has to be a hallucination_ - edged his way around the room and shut the busted-in door. Planted his back against it and looked back at the corpse.

The corpse inside the salt lines. Oh crap.

If the sheriff's spirit decided to get pissed off and stick around, it'd be trapped inside the room with Dean and-

Dean stumbled over to the night stand, rummaging through for the Bible that was always in hotel rooms. He tried in vain to remember anything he knew or anything Pastor Jim had ever said about funeral practices or last rites, but it was like trying to catch soapy snakes. Snakes. Don't think about the snakes either. The howling made it impossible to concentrate. _Hallucination. Not real._

What was he looking for in the Bible? Funeral stuff for the dead cop. Right. He flipped the faux-leather bound book open to a random page.

_Why then doth a living man complain for the punishment of his sins?_

Dean frowned, pressed his back into the corner and flipped to another page.

_Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit._

The hounds took up a flurry of barking. Dean jumped, nearly dropping the book. The pages flipped again.

_And fear not them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear the One that is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell._

Breath left Dean like he'd been punched. Dean slapped the Bible closed and flung it away; it hit the floor spinning and slid under the edge of the bed. He grabbed a blanket off the other bed and held it in front of himself like a shield as he approached the dead cop.

The sheriff's body stared at the ceiling, mouth slack, fingers still clenched on the fabric of his uniform shirt.

Dean swallowed. "Uh. Rest in Peace. Please? I'm sorry."

The corpse lay silent.

Dean threw the blanket overtop of the sheriff and skittered into the other room to sit on the corner of the bed, watching the corpse for signs of unrest, hounds barking in his ears.

It didn't matter now, what came through the door. Hell Hound, going back to Hell. Housekeeping, dead cop on the floor, going to jail, dead in an hour, going back to Hell.

On his best day, he'd have a hard time fast-talking his way out of a dead cop on the floor of their hotel room. Best bet would be to run. But running makes you look guilty. _Also, can't run, hounds will get me. Stay in the room, inside the salt, but salt doesn't keep hounds away, keeps the ghost trapped. Will it _force _the sheriff to be a ghost? Can his soul move on if it's inside a ring of salt or, or-_

Dean swallowed. _Let him rest. I hope he gets to rest. Please, just let the guy go wherever he's going and not try to stick around and start some shit. Get a grip dammit. This is stupid, it's all hallucinations, none of this is _real!

His pulse thundered in his ears as he tried to watch every direction at once, and scratched at the sores on his arms. He was exhausted. Dogs were howling, toenails scratching at the walls and it was all happening again. After everything he'd done in his life, he'd wasted it, thrown it away, because he didn't, hadn't, couldn't-

_Stupid, stupid, they're coming for you and it's all your fault. You're dying again. You're going back. You know why. you know why._

-.-

Dean's phone rang before he could pick himself up off the floor, heart slowing to normal rhythm.

He answered the phone, looking around irrationally for signs of Lilith who he knew had never been there. "Hey, Sam."

"Dean! It worked?"

Dean clamped down on the watery feeling in his stomach. "Well, I'm not dead."

"Oh thank god."

He got to his feet. "Got a small problem. Sheriff showed up."

"Crap. ...Is he-"

"He dropped dead in the hotel room after breaking the door down."

"Crap."

"We gotta bug out, Sam. I'll pack up everything and meet you down the block, near that convenience store." Maybe that'd give him some time to rebuild his grip on the world.

"Okay. I'll... Um. I'll get Bobby to pick you up. There's a chain wrapped around... uh.

"Wrapped around what?"

"Uh. Never mind. I'll explain later."

"All right."

"You sound better, Dean. Not freaking out."

"Yeah? Why shouldn't I sound better?"

"No, just... I'm glad."

"Look, we can put on some Streisand and discuss my emotional state later, Sam, right now I'm in a hotel room with a dead cop and a shitload of weaponry and I'd kind of like to get-"

"Right, right. Sorry. Bobby's on his way."

"Good."

Dean hung up. Slow deep breaths. The fear had gone, his heart wasn't exploding anymore, but the memories were still there. Fresh, raw, and undeniable.

He grabbed the duffel bags and started packing.

Five minutes later he left the hotel through a service entrance, carrying their gear and heading for the convenience store down the block. Walking gave him unwelcome time to process the last minutes he was gripped by the ghost sickness.

He'd known it wasn't really Lilith, that it couldn't be Lilith, not in that body. That kid was _safe_ and in shit-loads of therapy in wherever the hell that town was. Idaho? Indiana? She was safe and they'd saved her; Sammy hadn't killed her. No, no.

Dean had tried to deny her presence. He'd shouted, "You're not real!"

She'd said, "You remember the fun you had down there?"

At the words, he'd plunged down through the memory of Lilith's 'Playtime' in Hell, fogged into the early days, days that had mercifully blurred together into one long scream, now suddenly snapping into clear detailed focus. But that wasn't what she'd been talking about. Dean knew it wasn't. But his mind had skated around the other memories, just as it had since he'd come back.

With each over-pressured heartbeat, the memories had become stronger, more vivid. Flashed into his active memory, fresh as yesterday. It wasn't that he'd forgot, but that he had been forcing himself not to remember.

At the end, when he couldn't move and Lilith was screaming his pulse at him, and his heart was beating so fast it felt like it was caught in the Impala's fan-belt, the memories thundered over him. Pain, torture and screaming and the worst part, the worst part, was becoming the torturer. Giving up. Surrendering, and doing things so vile...

He'd denied it, he'd pushed it away, he'd sunk it down deep under a layer of snark and surliness, but it was no use. The memories existed.

He'd done that. He'd made that choice, to be like them and escape the torments being inflicted on him. The memory had surged to the surface of his mind like a bloated corpse in a stagnant pond. He couldn't push it back down, he couldn't deny the things he'd done.

-.-

Bobby caught sight of Dean, standing on the sidewalk near a liquor store, packed down into himself tighter than their gear was packed into the bags he was carrying.

He pulled the Chevelle up to the curb and pushed open the passenger door. Dean flipped the seat forward, slinging the duffels and a shopping bag that clinked and sloshed into the back seat before getting in.

"Hey Bobby," Dean said, imperfectly casual.

"Hey yourself." Bobby pulled out into traffic, glancing at Dean. He didn't seem to be injured, and the scratches on his arms Sam had told Bobby about had disappeared. Dean wasn't jumping at everything. Or anything. His face was still as stone, his eyes were focussed on something other than the world in front of them.

"Y'all right?"

"Yeah." Dean said, the word escaping without separating his teeth.

"Sam's clearing up a few things out at the mill. Everything okay at the room?"

"Hotel room's cleared. Wiped for prints. I ditched the credit card we used at the hotel in the alley beside the liquor store."

Bobby nodded. "Good. Some poor bastard'll pick it up and be laying a false trail for you two before dark."

Dean's jaw clenched tighter, and his eyes went flinty. "Yeah."

They rode in silence for a while. Bobby tried not to watch Dean out of the corner of his eye, but it was hard not to. The boy was a pile of hurting; fresh and raw, flaring like a bonfire in the passenger seat. Bobby had no idea what kind of fears this buru-buru might have brought up for Dean in the final stages. The boy had literally been to Hell and back.

For the month he'd been back, Dean had been trying to act almost like nothing had happened, like he really didn't remember anything from Hell. Bobby had doubted that, but knew that need to push memory away in order to get on with what there was of living, so he didn't question it.

He slowed to a stop for a stop sign and Dean twisted around, reaching into the back seat. Bobby waited and watched in the mirror as Dean took a forty ounce bottle of scotch out of the shopping bag and stuffed it into his duffel.

Dean had seen Bobby's worst memory, brought up by that kid with the dream-root. He'd helped him break out of that personal nightmare, saved his life. Bobby didn't know how to even start helping Dean with the memories of whatever happened in Hell. Much as he might want to, Bobby suspected the last thing Dean wanted was someone trying to 'help' right now.

Dean turned back around and flopped into the seat, expression now that same one of mild amusement the kid could usually slap on and cover anything with, but his eyes were still flint. He shot a glance at Bobby, meeting the older man's gaze.

"You done rootin' around back there?" Bobby asked.

"Yep."

"Anything you feel like talkin' about?"

"Nope." Dean turned away and stared out the side window.

Bobby looked at Dean a half-second longer before he shifted his eyes forward and proceeded through the intersection. "Didn't think so."

They drove to the mill in silence.

-.-

At the mill, Dean drank his beer, trying not to be skittish and second-guess himself, or over-react to anything. Also tried not to think too hard about a Sam who even thought of doing stuff like torturing a freaking ghost to death. Tearing apart some poor bastard's soul to save Dean. Or a Bobby that helped him do it.

He didn't flinch when Sam's eyes flashed yellow. It was probably a leftover hallucination, or a trick of the light. Whether it was real or not, it didn't matter.

Dean filed all that with the refreshed and roiling memories of Hell. Something else to jam down, bottle up and get past.

Whatever happened, whenever, he'd deal with it. He wasn't giving up again.

"I'm fine," he said, and meant it as much as he ever did.

-.-.-.-

(that's it)

**Post A/N:** I'm pretty sure Sam actually picked Dean up, but I wanted a Dean and Bobby scene in there, so I bent the implied facts a hair. Anyway. Please keep in mind that this is Dean in the grip and aftermath of fear, and fear is irrational, and so forth. If you've read to the end, I'd really like to know what you think.

Oh and please, _please_, no spoilers for anything unaired in North America in comments. :-)


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